Thursday, October 29, 2009

There is confusion. I know this because people have said to me, 'this new random dungeon daily thing, you have to PuG, right?' No, you don't. Five of you can form a Guild group and then get the system to select a random dungeon for you. What's great about this NOW is that every time you DO pick a random dungeon you'll earn an extra Two Elbows of Triumph. Yes, two per dungeon. Don't believe me? Speak to da Blue!

Daily Random Heroic Dungeon with people from your realm.
You can form a group of five players, have the party leader open the Dungeon System and select the Random Heroic option. The pre-made group will be able to port to the selected instance, not be bound by any of the cross-realm restrictions (such as mandatory Need Before Greed, trade restrictions, Vote Kick, etc.), and will receive the daily reward for completing the dungeon. Your pre-made group could continue to select the Random Heroic option again and again to continue running any Heroic that pops up each time -- even if a Heroic dungeon pops up that you've already done -- and you will continue to get loot and Emblems of Triumph from each boss, plus two additional Emblems of Triumph for completing the random Heroic instance. (Source)

So, Guild groups can still happily run Heroics until the Taurens return to the Farm with additional FREE lewts. For a full run down of the changes to LFG, check the Official Blizzard Post.

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

- There's details about the new Weekly Fishing Quest up all over the place. The +5% XP BoA ring as a reward is rather special (and any mention of Dread Pirates is welcomed here) but a line from the Blue post jumped out and caught my eye ahead of the actual details:

Don't forget, in patch 3.3.0 you never catch trash from fishing pools, regardless of skill.

That's pretty significant, you know. If you spend your life simply fishing in pools, you can level and NEVER get useless items. There's been talk of further upgrades to fishing come Cataclysm, I reckon this could be a start.

- We're seeing a lot of changes to the starting areas, plus the addition of Tutorials and the changes to the Character Creation screen. WoW.com flags up the changes to wolves in the Elwynn Starting Area and postulates this may be part of a bigger move. Mania's Arcania suggests it may simply be as a result of upcoming changes to Felwood. Either way, any changes to the Old World will be keenly followed as Cataclysm grows closer...

- A quick screenie, if I may.

We cleared the 10 man event at the Tournament on Saturday night in a little under 50 minutes, which makes me think we're probably ready for the Heroic Mode. At a loss we decided we'd go try do some 10 man Ulduar achievements. Heartbreaker is the first Hard Mode we've tried and succeeded with, and we did it with 9 people for the last 45%. As a result of Saturday's efforts we're now ranked #4 on our Server's 10 Man Strict Achievements Listing. What does this mean, I hear you cry? Here's the lowdown from GuildOx:

What is the 10-man 'strict' criteria?

Guilds will be excluded when they earn any Coliseum 25 normal kills or any Ulduar 25 hard-mode kills. Please allow 3-4 days for a guild to be excluded from the strict list after earning an excluding kill. Guilds must also have their 10M Progress World Rank be better than (lower than) their 25M Progress World Rank.

Normally guilds will earn these 25m kill achievements when either 10 players complete a kill in the same raid or when 15 players complete the kill over time. We have added a special trigger for the Coliseum 25 normal kills that will exclude a guild from strict rankings when 5 players achieve any boss kill in the same raid or a total of 10 players achieve it over time. For example, if your guild pugs Coliseum 25 normal then you will be excluded from the strict rankings when a total of 10 players in your guild participate in the Beasts of Northrend 25 normal kill (or if 5 of them earn the kill in the same raid).

Got that? Good!

Will be off to the PTR later, so part 2 of our Quest for the Sword will continue!